Clariel

by Nix,Garth

  I must use it only as I need to, only to do what must be done. No more.

  “Aziminil. I want you to carry me beyond the waterfall, to the eastern bank of the Ratterlin, and then beyond to Belisaere, as safely and swiftly as you may. And should my garments fray, or my skin somehow be shown, you will not touch any part of me. Do you understand and obey?”

  “I understand and obey, Mistress,” replied Aziminil, lifting her head, the strange void that served as her face directed toward Clariel. A small cloud of mist wafted across her blood-red skin, tiny gouts of steam blowing up as it touched. “But I do not have the strength alone to carry you through the waterfall. It is too great a cascade, the water too swift.”

  “You must release and bind another creature,” said Mogget from near Clariel’s feet, his emerald eyes intent on Aziminil. “Draw up one of the chains, open a bottle.”

  “But which one?” asked Clariel. “There could be anything out there. Is there some record, some register?”

  “Once there was,” said Mogget. “Long neglected, lost these many years. But you are strong, Clariel. Take any bottle, none within the falls can stand against your will.”

  “The Mogget’s advice is sound, Mistress,” said Aziminil.

  “I just draw up a chain?” asked Clariel. She looked back at the table, and the hooked stick. “With that gaff thing?”

  “Yes,” said Mogget. “Best be quick. Rock alone will not stay the sendings long, and a message will have gone to the Abhorsen.”

  “Again, the Mogget offers good counsel,” said Aziminil.

  Clariel looked at the gaff, then back at the waterfall, and the narrow outcrop that bore the chains. Even lying down, it would be very slippery, and she would have to edge some way into the waterfall itself, go into that massive downrush of water. It would be so easy to get washed away. But if Aziminil spoke the truth, then she had to bring up another bottle to make her escape . . .

  She could still feel the rage, close at hand. It would not need any great effort to bring it back. She could bind another Free Magic creature, she knew. More than one, if it proved necessary. She could gather all the bottles, bind a score, no a hundred creatures to serve her, and then none could stand . . .

  Clariel lifted her hand to slap herself in the face, but the movement alone was enough to break these runaway thoughts. Which was just as well given she wore a bronze mask. She would have bruised her hand. This made her laugh, and that helped too. She felt more secure, more normal.

  But there was still only one way out and that meant getting another bottle, binding another servant . . .

  “Aziminil. Go to the rocks by the door and do what you can to slow the sendings coming through. Mogget, you go with her.”

  “I can help you with the bottles,” said Mogget. “Tell you who’s inside perhaps.”

  Clariel shook her head.

  “You should stay away from the water,” she said, though they both knew this was not the reason. She did not trust the cat-thing, despite his Charter mark collar or perhaps even because of it, for she could not understand where his loyalties truly lay, or what he was. It would be too easy even for a small cat to help her fall from that slippery tongue of stone.

  “As you wish,” said Mogget haughtily, and stalked away. Aziminil bowed, and followed him, spiked feet striking sparks that leaped and spat and made sharp cracking noises as they fell into the puddled water on the floor.

  Clariel picked up the gaff and felt along its length. The wooden shaft had moss growing on it, and a few soft patches, but it felt solid enough. The hook was rusted, but she banged it on the stone table and it rang true enough.

  She took off her sword and laid it on the table. After a moment’s hesitation, she also took off the robe, gauntlets, and overshoes and then even her simple leather slippers. The stone was very cold under her feet, but she knew that bare soles would serve her better. She left the bronze mask on, thinking it would offer some protection for her eyes from the force of the falling water.

  Taking up the gaff in both hands, Clariel walked to the end of the spit of stone and knelt down. Dragging the gaff, she crawled out of the shelter of the cavern and into the waterfall. It hit her like a bruising blow, all along her back, water gushing around her head so forcefully that it threatened to drown her even as she hunched over, trying to maintain some small pocket of air. It was like being in the heaviest rainstorm ever, one so dense there were no individual drops, just a constant wave of water.

  If she had entered it standing up, she would have been knocked over in an instant. Even crawling it was very difficult to keep steady, at least till she reached the first of the chains, which at least offered something to hold on to. For a moment, Clariel thought she would hook that one up, but then she reconsidered. Closer to the edge probably meant more newly placed, she reasoned. It might be a weak thing, insufficiently strong to help Aziminil take Clariel out through the falls. Then she would have to come out again to find a third.

  No, better to go out farther now. Find something older and more powerful, something that would serve her better.

  Clariel crawled over the first chain, holding on to others ahead, and continued on, going farther out and deeper into the waterfall. The crashing waters were really hurting her now, as savage as any blow she’d ever felt, hard as the training weapons she’d used long ago in the practice yard of the Estwael Trained Band with her schoolfellows. Still she kept on, till reaching ahead her fingers encountered no more chains, but a jagged edge of rock, so unlike the smoothly worked edges to either side that she thought it must once have extended farther, but had been broken off by the tireless assault of falling water.

  The third-last chain would do, Clariel thought, some vestige of caution exerting itself at last. Whatever dangled from the furthermost chain might offer a challenge too great even for her new and much puffed-up confidence. Holding tight, she reached out and down with the gaff, and, after a few attempts, got the hook securely through a link. Then she cautiously drew up a green glass bottle from below, the Charter marks on it glowing so brightly they cut through even the dense wall of water.

  She hesitated to touch the bottle. The marks shone so brightly, and for the first time ever she felt some fear of the Charter. She had never understood the Charter, never wanted to understand it, it was just something that was there in her life. But here, even half-drowned, pummeled by the waterfall, and in a precarious position on a narrow tongue of stone, she felt the awful majesty of the Charter.

  I need this bottle, I need the creature within, Clariel thought. I cannot save Aunt Lemmin with Charter Magic. I cannot save myself . . .

  There was a pain in her forehead, as if the mask was pressing there too tightly and she did not want to touch those Charter marks. To delay doing so, she started to shuffle backward, now holding the chain up above her head, so the bottle dangled safely a yard or so above the stone. She did not think it could be easily broken, but she didn’t want to put it to the test. If the creature within broke free before she was ready . . .

  Halfway back to the cavern floor, Clariel realized the chain was long enough that she could bring the bottle all the way back, rest it near the lip, and then open it. Whatever challenge the spells on the bottle offered, she would not have to confront them out here, under the waterfall. She could do as she did before. Raise the fury and open the bottle as a berserk, protected by her rage.

  If she could raise the fury.

  Clariel felt tired already, not to mention bruised and battered by the waterfall. But she knew there was no choice. As with a hunt, even at the end of the day, if it was not finished then you had to go on.

  She took a few minutes to rest once she got back to the cavern, just sitting cross-legged on the edge of the cliff. The spray still buffeted her, but it was not too strong. Mogget sat on the table, watching Aziminil, who was watching the falling stones. But the cat did not say anything as Clariel got up and came over to the table. His eyes narrowed, and his tail twitched, but h
e said no word.

  “I forgot to ask,” said Clariel, as she wearily put her protective garments back on, fastening hood, gauntlets, and overboots. “Are you coming with me?”

  “I cannot leave the House without the permission of the Abhorsen or the Abhorsen-in-Waiting . . .” said Mogget thoughtfully. “But then, no Abhorsen has forbidden me to leave for a very long time . . . I wonder if I can . . . do you want me to come?”

  “I don’t know,” said Clariel. “Maybe. Yes. I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “Our interests are aligned,” said Mogget very carefully.

  “I wish I could ask Bel,” said Clariel. “But I know he’d try to stop me.”

  “There you are then,” said Mogget. “The point, in any case, is moot. Neither of us may be leaving, unless you get on with it.”

  “I suppose so,” said Clariel. She looked down at the green glass bottle with its tarnished silver stopper wound with gold wire. “Do you know what . . . who is in this one?”

  “There are spells of enquiry,” said Mogget. “But I fear you do not know them. It doesn’t matter. I am sure . . . I am confident . . . you will prove stronger than the entity within.”

  Clariel looked over at Aziminil, who was watching the fallen stones around the former door like a cat before a mousehole. The she looked back at the bottle. Such a small thing to contain a creature of elemental power . . .

  “Hesitation oft incurs a price,” said Mogget. “One you might not be willing to pay.”

  “I make my own decisions,” said Clariel, and called up the fury.

  Mogget backed away as she stood rigid above the bottle, her fists clenched within the gauntlets. Once again she she relived the night of her parents death, the smirk of Aronzo, the crushing boot of the guard outside Kargrin’s door, the darkness of the prison hole . . .

  But the fury would not rise. Clariel bit her lip again, but even the blood in her mouth would not kindle the fire within. She had damped it down too far, and the spark was cold.

  Across the cavern, stones rumbled. The helmeted head and sword-wielding arm of a sending thrust out through a hole, to be met by a savage, leaping kick from Aziminil that sent her spiked foot right through the neck of the magical being. Sparks and charter marks exploded in all directions, the sending crumbling into its component parts. But there were many more behind it, pulling at the edges of the hole, dragging rocks aside, making the way broader, no matter how many times Aziminil hopped and jumped and struck with her savage, sharp feet. There were too many sendings, scores and scores of sendings, more than Clariel had ever imagined could be within the House.

  She took off her left gauntlet, fumbling with the knots that tied it to her robe, too conscious of how swiftly the sendings were breaking through. Her hand free, she took up her knife and sliced it across her palm, along the line of the barely healed wound from the Islet.

  Pain blossomed, terrible pain that ran from her hand to her arm to the center of her head. Clariel embraced it, drank it in, fed it to the rage.

  But still it was not enough, not until she lifted her hand to her bronze-masked face, opened the lid over the mouth-hole and pressed her palm there, blood spilling through upon her tongue.

  Then the rage came, so swiftly that Clariel barely managed to do as the book told her, to retreat her conscious mind to an island within. There she used the last of her calm self to slip the gauntlet back on and to force her attention not at the sendings who she ached to fight, but at the bottle in front of her.

  Once again, stopper, gold wire, and the sealing spells were no match for a berserk. Clariel felt the bone-snapping and the heart-stopping spells as a mere itch and a pang no worse than indigestion. Flinging the stopper to the ground, she held the bottle upside down and roared, “Come out! Come out, whatever you are!”

  But the creature inside was already out, out in the instant Clariel broke the seal. It did not come out fighting, like Aziminil. It just stood there, a few paces from the shouting berserk, as still as if it had been carved from the rock of the cavern.

  It was tall, nine feet or more. Its body was manlike, but thin as a spindle, with arms and legs jointed too many times, white bone protruding in lumps through flesh as blue as best azure ink. Its neck was no wider than Clariel’s wrist, its head more akin to a wolf than anything else. A wolf’s head stretched long and the mouth cut at the corners to fit in more teeth. Its eyes were like Aziminil’s face, dark voids of nothing, empty and drear.

  Clariel lunged forward and gripped it by those impossibly thin wrists, to twist and bend it to the floor. Sparks and Charter marks flew in profusion, but the creature did not give way. It held fast as Clariel tried to twist its wrists, and she felt its cold thoughts invade her mind, exerting a terrible pressure that seemed to enter through the holes in her mask, as if unseen thumbs were pressing upon her eyes, rough fingers attacking her mouth.

  “I am Baazalanan,” said a voice that filled the cavern and echoed deep inside Clariel’s head, making her cheekbones ache to the very marrow. “Bow down before your master!”

  Clariel felt her knees begin to bend, her fingers begin to uncurl where they gripped those impossibly thin, impossibly strong wrists. Her hands were hot, almost burning, and there were fewer Charter marks falling from the gauntlets, the sparks subsiding, as if the protective cloth was already wearing thin.

  “Bow down,” said Baazalanan. Its voice was soft and slippery, but strong, like a crawling snake that was winding through Clariel’s head, flexing and looping, readying itself to crush her and strangle her will. There was nothing she could do, even with the fury stretching every muscle and sinew, concentrating every thought. She could not move the creature, could not free its grip on her mind.

  In her berserk state she could not believe this was happening. It was not possible for an enemy to resist her power. But in the small part of her mind that remained separate, she knew it was so, that she had gambled and lost. Mogget and Aziminil had led her on, and her own foolishness had put her feet willingly upon this path.

  “I will not give up,” she whispered. Letting go of the creature, she stepped back and shouted, “Aziminil! To me!”

  As she shouted, she surrendered the small conscious part of her mind to the fury, to become truly berserk. Frothing at the mouth, she smashed her bronze-armored forehead into Baazalanan’s middle, and once again grabbed and twisted its wrists. She felt Aziminil close behind her, and drew upon her power, as much as she could through the barrier of her protective garments.

  “Bow down,” said Baazalanan, but both its audible voice and the mental one in Clariel’s head quavered, and there was finally a tremor in its wrists. Clariel laughed, a laugh that was twin to her mother’s in Kilp’s house, the laugh of someone who has totally surrendered to their rage.

  The pressure in Clariel’s head began to ebb away, the sinuous grip of the Free Magic creature began to loosen. The narrow wrists were no longer as hard to move as stone, but shifted under her grasp. Clariel twisted harder and Baazalanan screamed, the scream further strengthening Clariel’s rage. She dragged the wrists down and the tall stick of a creature followed, its legs bending thrice, each joint making a noise like a snapped green branch as it folded.

  “I submit,” squealed Baazalanan as it fell down, but Clariel did not answer. Instead she shifted her hands to grip one arm alone, and tried to tear it from its socket. She was lost now, lost in fury, and all talk of submission, of her plan to escape, all of it was gone. She would rend the creature limb from limb, and throw its torn carcass into the waterfall to be destroyed forever.

  “Clariel! Stop!”

  Something was calling her name, something annoying. Clariel dropped Baazalanan’s arm and whirled around. A white shape rose up on its rear legs ahead of her. She roared and charged at it, hands grasping, but it jumped aside and shot under the table. Clariel sprang after it, and almost grabbed a tail, but it was too quick. It ran to its left, and Clariel sped around the table to her right, but when
she got to the other side there was no sign of the impudent creature.

  Then it called again.

  “Clariel, Clariel! Stop! Think!”

  She whirled around. Where was it? She couldn’t see the pesky thing, and her original enemy was getting up. The tall creature. How dare it get up! She stalked back toward it, on tiptoe, body arched to spring, hands shaking, the froth dribbling down the chin of her bronze mask.

  Baazalanan sank back down and bowed its wolf-head, mouth shut to hide its teeth. It laid its long arms out in front, taloned fingers flat on the stone.

  “Clariel! Take its submission! That’s what you want!” called Mogget.

  Clariel stood over the kneeling creature and raised her fist, ready to bring it down on the back of the creature’s head, just where it met that spindle of a neck. But as she did so, she felt some of her power ebb. Turning, she saw Aziminil back away, bowing as she did so.

  “Mistress, you wished to bind this one, not kill. Make it serve you and we shall all turn against your true enemies.”

  True enemies. Bind to serve . . .

  The thoughts penetrated Clariel’s enraged mind. The lessening of power from Aziminil took the edge off her rage. She faltered, suddenly unsure of what she was doing. The rage faded a little further, and some rationality returned.

  Clariel turned back to the kneeling Baazalanan and laid just one finger on its head. This time, it was her turn to find a way into its strange, cool mind, to extend a mental grip upon its thoughts.

  “Swear to serve me forever, or be destroyed.”

  “I will serve, Mistress,” said the creature.

  Clariel lifted her finger, and stepped back, her mind withdrawing from the creature as she took the step. She took another, and swayed, and then fell to her knees. Aziminil and Baazalanan did not move, and she still could not see Mogget.

  But she could hear the tumble of stones being pushed aside, and looking across, she saw a multitude of sendings gathered beyond the destroyed doorway, the half dozen at the front straining against one enormous boulder that still blocked their way.